The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1887-01-04
CURED OF HUNTING.
A Girls Narrow Escape After Kill
ing a White Deer.

L Was UOTH Will Iuc IHStlnclS VI a
, true sportsmen. For long time / was
at a loss to know from what source had
come my passion for guns and cunning.
My father was any thing but connois-
seur of deadly weapons, and my
mother never knew the butt from the
muzzle of a gun, and was equally
afraid of each. After careful digging
at the roots of the family tree, the
scientific basis for hereditary transmits
sion was vindicated, for found that
my grandmother was a cousin of Kit
Carson, the great American hunter and
trapper.
While [ was a child, it amused my
brothers to hear me discuss the merits
of choke-bore shot-guns and breech-
loading rifles, but when grew to wom-
ans estate this highly unfeminine
taste displeased and even alarmed
them. They were very proper young
men, and did not relish the idea of
young lady sister who could take a
snipe on the wing, or pierce the bulls
eye with a revolver at sixty PAGES.
Dear boys, they feared, too. that such
propensity might seriously endanger
my being settled in life. They remon-
strated, they scolded; they brought me
the accounts of all the dreadful acct
dents that resulted from the use of fire
arms, and tried to extort from me a
promise that | would never touch a
gun again. / might have yielded had
not an unfortunate circumstance Oc-
hot 70 oil
treaties.
An uncle who had heard of my skill,
and was queer and old-fashiOned enough
to admire it, sent me, on my eighteenth
birthday, a handsome Winchester rifle,
which he had ordered made for me.
From that day / ceased to struggle
against fate. Bryant's Lines TO a
Water-FowF' always brought to my
Imagination other thoughts than those
commonly suggested to feminine read
ers; and not only in thought, but
in rubber boots and with game-bag.
have ] hunted that classic bird on lake
shore and river bottom. At one time
it was a canvas-back, slowly veering
TO the south, with neck outstretched
and eye of faith; at another, it was a
stately mallard or jaunty teal, spoon
bill or sprig-tail. But / painted for
nobler game. longed for the excite
ment of the chase; to be where
1.-The stag at eve had drunk his 1ll;"
to see and be the belted hunter. When
should have been devising patterns
for sofa-cushions and learning to paint
on silk and china, my heart was away
on the boundless plains chasing deer
and antelope. As Caedmon was
haunted by vision, in which he was
told to sing; as Socrates was pursued
by a damon, who insisted that he
should make music-so, by some
strange law of psychology / felt that
my life would never be complete until
had hunted the deer or tracked the
grizzly in his mountain home.
The opportunity came. Some friends
invited me to spend a few weeks at
their home in the Sierra. They had a
little house among the pines, in one of
the most romantic regions of the
range. A hunting-party was formed
for my especial entertainment, and the
night before, as a prelude to the NOR
rows excitement. we listened around
the fire TO the wild stories of the
Olu SlublOOl.
Z1y who had been known in the region
for fifteen or twenty years, was ia
vorite topic. No one had had the
hardihOod TO attack him since he had
pursued hunter long distance and
killed him with one stroke of his gigan-
tic paw. An enormous trap had once
been set for him, and he had caught
his foot in it, but, with wonderful in
telligence, he had gone to the nearest
rock and, beaten it of. He was seen
occasionally in the passing years, and
. now and then he helped himself to
sheep or calf unmolested.
There was also a white doe among
the neighborfng mountains which
seemed to bear a charmed life, for
many hunters had shot at it bat al
ways missed. A superstition had nat
urallv grown up about it. and the